Just wanted to share with you something I learned today.
I was about to shop for the Remotec ZXT-120 AC IR controller and the Fibaro FBGS-321 IO board when I noticed that those two units had been around for quite a few years.
I found it a bit strange that my local vendor listed both items as Z-Wave plus items.
Upon sending both producers a mail, these are the answers I got:
Is that true? One single non-plus node is lowering the complete data rate in the entire network? This would be a pain, as I have 85 nodes an just one is non-plus…Where did you read that?
The system will adapt and use the highest link available over each link. Most of the ZWave plus enhancements are in software (ie they are new command classes) and this doesn’t impact on the hardware at all. Some are directly hardware (higher power, higher speed) - and some are protocol levels (eg NWI, NWE) - these sort of things are more progressively being added in different protocol versions.
It does of course mean that if a zwave plus device is routing through and older device, then it will use a lower speed for that link, but that’s all. It will still provide all the ZWave plus features - it will just send data a little slower, so messages might take another ten millisecond or so to be transmitted.
However, the whole network will not be degraded to the slowest node in the network.
It was while I was deciding for what HA system to go for that I read it in a forum, but trawling the WEB again now, it looks like this post sums it up: (sorry, no direct link)
Yes, a side note and not the topic in this thread. And additionally pure marketing stuff far from reality.
My experience is definetely different. I equipped a new 200 square meters residential house with 100 Z-Wave devices. And installation and integration was a pain (and in some aspects still is). My concrete floor between ground level and first floor still causes problems and issues for Z-Wave while my Sonos system with only 6 meshed devices works like a charm. I spent weeks analyzing logs with timeouts, changing poitions of the controller, installing repeaters etc. for Z-Wave. Sonos works much better for without any adminsitration need for much higher data streams. And I have 99% ZWave-plus-devices which should perform even better than Z-Wave…
The standard installation and inclusion process for Z-Wave is definetely not designed for large scale buildings. It is fine if you install one switch, wire it, then include it, get the node number and then go on. But if you install 100 nodes an then want to start inclusion: no fun. That is why I included all devices first on my desk before mounting them. The result was that I knew the node numbers but the mesh was upset as every device found itself to be the only one in the network in the first moment of inclusion. So communication in my network was poor. And it took months(!) to improve that. So I would be really curious to know how the hotel with 65.000 devices was installed???
I also do not understand how 65.000 devices are combined as a Z-Wave network only supports 233 nodes per controller.
However, I so far could not find any better technology than Z-Wave. Zigbee does not really offer interoperations between the products from different manufacturers, Homematic/Insteon is not really meshed and KNX requires wiring and causes 4 times the cost…that is why I am still working on optimizing my home based on Z-Wave.
I stop now as this is completely off topic, but the marketing shit about 65.000 Z-Wave devices in a large hotel is IMHO far from reality.